The city moved my car, but didn't tell me ...

The idea to investigate this weird urban towing phenomenon stemmed from a friend learning her car was relocated -- a practice neither she nor I had any clue existed until then.

Her case sparked my interest, and I wanted to see if we were the only people in the city who weren’t aware that relocating went on.

We weren’t.

I submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request to the City of Chicago’s Streets and Sanitation Department and one of our data reporters helped me sift through a response showing that of the 17,000 vehicles relocated by the city in the last year, most of them came from the North Side.

Then, I called around to dozens of people who’d recently had their cars relocated by the city to ask about their experience. A few said it wasn’t hard to find their car -- but many said they were panicked; some thought their car had been stolen. One family still thought their car was stolen until I called them.

We found that people who had their car relocated often complained about a lack of communication from the city. Many weren’t mad their car was moved as such -- but were mad that no one informed them.

The scope provided by the city's towing relocation records, coupled with the personal stories gained by many days' worth of phone calls, resulted in Tuesday's story in the Chicago Tribune.